Animal Fleeing AI Rework

[DHRifleman]

If you mess with random fleeing direction, you will have even more issues with the pathfinding

[Giuh]

Now, what Danthemanboone said is pretty much what we were looking to address, currently animals always flee directly away from the spooking source and it was this that we wanted to try tweak to make a little more realistic, which is where my word “Randomised” was used, we would never just make animals spook randomly as suggested, if an animal spooks it’s going to be because you or another source has spooked it, nothing else. It was our intent that having animals flee the scene in other directions would present a new, fresh feeling and present the chance for broadside shots. The tracking after finding the first few tracks, would be much the same as it is today.

Would this make driven hunts impossible to do? If so I'll miss them

[sircaptgordo]

The noise distance to spook an animal when placing a tree stand seems to have grown since the sound disappeared. I may be wrong and probably are, I think I used to be closer to an animal and place the tree stand without spooking. To me I have noticed it quite a few times.

I figure some animals spook easier than others even in the game. I was in a wide open space a couple days ago when I got a male reindeer roar over this hill. The hill was from say the middle of the huntermate to over half the distance to the edge. Then the first reindeer flee print was at the opposite side base of the hill. I could hear the rattle so I was looking in that direction and couldn't see the male yet.

It spooked when I put my tree stand on a tree. I even walked backwards from where I was at to try and make sure it didn't spook. But it did and it was a big one by the huntermate's numbers.

Anyway, I'd like to see the distance the tree stand spooks an animal be smaller. And if it did change at the time the sound quit, then put back at least where it was.

thanks
g

Sometimes is not the animal you see the one that spook, by example you can detect a reindeer at 120mts, then place the treestand thinking that is far enough to not scare it, but maybe what you didn't see was a bear or a roe that was closer, and that animal run away scaring the others, it happens often in areas with low visibility like forest, and in my personal experience is very annoying when you are trying to place a treestand to lure a buck in range for the bow and suddenly discover a unseen doe running and scaring the whole forest.

Yow, I've seen that happen also. Even though it was a wide open space, that still could have happened.

I said this in another post the other day. A herd of reindeer and a lynx was both coming at me in the same space at the same time. I had called both from a tree stand. They were still 50m from me when the male reindeer did a reverse flee. Then the lynx made a reverse flee a second later. I doubt the reindeer fled from seeing me, must have been the lynx.

thanks for the info
g

[J_Birdman]

leaving such an open ended question, clearly with a lack of information was a stupid idea on my behalf

Yes, it was. You took a grenade, pulled the pin, and ran out of the building.

Looking at the feedback in this thread there is a lot of negativity against the original suggestion, not the idea as such, but the fact that you would rather see existing bugs fixed instead. We hear you all about bugs and they are still getting worked on. It is important to remember that working on a new feature does not mean we can not address bugs as well, we can do both a the same time.

Wrong. We are against the idea of EW messing around with animal AI because we know the track record of every single release and would rather not see a slew of whole new bugs that we know will come out of it while EW is pumping things out faster than they can fix them. Game improvements are only game improvements if they don't break several other things at the same time.

My intent with this thread was to actually involve you as a community, in discussions with potential future improvements to the game. There are a few comments along the lines of “but what if you can’t implement it properly and it breaks more stuff”, if we had this train of thought, nothing would ever get put in the game.

Maybe it's time for EW to stop stuffing things into the game and fix the bugs instead of letting release bugs pile up one after the other on top of the old, unfixed bugs. I'm all for nothing else being put into the game, and as you can see in this thread, so is just about everyone else.

If I ever ask you this sort of question again, I will be sure to provide more details and very clearly write our intentions.

Best idea in this entire thread.

[DanthemanBoone]

@ birdman. Just be a little more judicious when you throw the word WE around. Not everyone has the same opinion you are championing.
Much of the reluctance has been generated by the inclusion of the vehicle introduction as the major factor behind this proposed change. That has never been confirmed as being the prime factor in the change. The cause of fleeing will be no different on a vehicle than that which causes fleeing from a hunter.

What is being suggested here is a change in the fleeing AI. That indicates a change in fleeing patterns from the restricted an predictable behaviors we currently have.
Surely a move to more realistic fleeing patterns instead of the current, 90 miles an hour directly away till they disappear or drop dead has to be considered as a move in the right direction.

If the introduction of new bugs has to be a result of every change, how many more bugs are going to be introduced fixing the existing bugs. Does that mean all who are calling for bug fixing are just asking for more trouble too.

[MaxVe]

DanthemanBoone "If the introduction of new bugs has to be a result of every change, how many more bugs are going to be introduced fixing the existing bugs."
This makes no sense in fact the bug fix is not the addition of new content, it has nothing to do with it and i believe that the work on the known bugs should be at the top of the list of works to be completed...

[J_Birdman]

@ birdman. Just be a little more judicious when you throw the word WE around. Not everyone has the same opinion you are championing.

It's self-evident that the first "we" I mentioned is the "we" who are against EW messing with fleeing for reason of there being enough bugs in the game already. If you're not among those, then my statement doesn't pertain to you and you are not included in the "we". If you are against my second usage, in "we know", then you are arguing that there won't be any new bugs incurred by messing with the fleeing AI. I would be really surprised, or even shocked, at this since you've been around a long time and therefore already know what usually happens when there's a new release or game update.

Surely a move to more realistic fleeing patterns instead of the current, 90 miles an hour directly away till they disappear or drop dead has to be considered as a move in the right direction.

Surely a move to change the fleeing AI will bring on even more bugs, some of which may be fixed fairly quickly, some of which may be fixed long down the road, some of which may never be fixed. This has to be considered as a move in the wrong direction at this point in time.

If the introduction of new bugs has to be a result of every change, how many more bugs are going to be introduced fixing the existing bugs. Does that mean all who are calling for bug fixing are just asking for more trouble too.

Gotta admit I don't know what you're talking about here. Who said anything about the fixing of bugs bringing on more bugs? No one that I've seen.

[Cashole42]

I haven't played this game long enough to have any kind of worthwhile opinion, but I'm gonna drop it anyway as a new player who has been affected by a crapload of bugs in the last month or so.

When I first started, life was good. Obviously I got stuck animals, the odd disappearing track (which I chalked up to bad tracking on my part and bought a dog to fix) and a few hunts in virtually empty reserves. But here lately, I've been getting hit with invisible animals, disappearing tracks, animals spooking for no visible reason at all (five bucks in less than half an hour with good camo, scent cover, good wind and no movement), shots that absolutely should have been organ shots but register as body all the way around, and a few times now I've had dead/live animals that can't be claimed and can't be seen by someone else on mp.

All of these bugs would be fine if they weren't starting to cluster up on virtually every hunt I attempt. Every animal I shoot now I wonder if I'll even be able to claim it. Reserves are still randomly empty one hunt and overloaded on another. I understand every game is going to be bugged. You are never going to be able to fix everything, especially in a game like this. That being said, it says a lot when an opportunity for new things that otherwise should excite your customers is instead met with an overwhelming chorus of 'no'. I don't know what y'all did to earn that one, but I'm betting it's deserved. As it is right now, my once nightly routine is on hold until I'm no longer afraid I'm going to lose half of what I shoot.

Now, with ALL of that out of the way, IF there wasn't going to be worry about what it will break, I would love to see some restructuring to fleeing. Predictable gets boring after a while.

[Commanche]

Hunted TGT yesterday. Fleeing muleys and elk ran in every direction but a straight line. Hell, some of them even turned and ran straight past me. Perhaps it's the terrain, I don't know but I can't help but wonder how some of these animals would react with a new fleeing AI compared to the rest of the maps Look, I'm all for change, but like a few others on here I too have a software background. You guys have bigger fish to fry...

[gas56]

This really doesn't surprise me how a lot of forum members are getting upset in the stomach over revising Animal Fleeing AI.
But EW's always had fish to fry,.. but that doesn't change the fact that the fish fry aren't going to stop
just because players don't like fish.
Right now the fish are biting so so there will be no shortage of catching fish for the fish fry.
And the old classic batter will be used to fry them.
So I wouldn't be surprised if everybody shows up to try it out!